Presently, digital dashboards are used to customize content by accessing information from a plurality of different sources and providing the content in a customizable format in a single location. For example, digital dashboards can include filtered email messages e.g., only the critical messages, a graph that gets its data from the stock price history of the company, a control panel to show the online status of the user's peers, a graph showing key revenue data pulled in real-time from the company's sales department, and the like.
In general, the digital dashboard gets its name from its appearance. That is, the digital dashboard is similar in function to a dashboard in a car or aircraft. For example, the gauges and indicators of the auto or aircraft dashboard are used to provide convenient and simplified decision making information that significantly increases the user's situational awareness. Similarly, the digital dashboard provides at-a-glance information such that presidents, vice presidents, managers, controllers, salespeople, customer service reps, and the like, will have greater situational awareness resulting in better, faster and more informed business decisions.
However, one problem with present digital dashboard design is the inherent customization thereof. That is, each digital dashboard is capable of performing different functions and providing different information based on a user's needs. Therefore, once a user decides what information is to be displayed on the digital dashboard and the format in which it is to be displayed, an experienced programmer is needed to generate the digital dashboard. That is, a programmer or technician is presently required to design the customized dashboard based on the user's requirements. In addition, the technician must also ensure that the dashboard correctly accesses the data and displays the information.
A second problem is that once the customized digital dashboard is operational, modifying the information provided by the dashboard requires the experienced programmer to rebuild the entire dashboard. For example, if the data being displayed is cost data for a week and the user decides the cost data should be displayed only for the day. Then, the programmer would need to reprogram the digital dashboard to display the newly desired data. During the reprogramming, the user assumes a plurality of penalties including digital dashboard downtime and the cost of modifying the dashboard. Therefore, in some cases, it may be necessary for a user to deal with a less than optimum digital dashboard instead of invoking the additional costs and time requirements necessary to modify the customized dashboard.